Hey everybody, I'm Shayna from EspressoEnglish.net and I'm here
with Gabby from GoNaturalEnglish.com and
we are recording the second video of our conversational English
series. So today we're going to talk a little bit about
our experience teaching English in the classroom. I think you'll find
a lot of interesting stuff, maybe some stories we have to share.
Gabby, tell me how long you've been teaching English. I've been
teaching English since about 2002.
That was my first, you know when I was
five years old, no joking, that was my first
time teaching conversational English,
tutoring, and I continued with it because I loved
it from that day. I've been teaching online now
since about 2011. Before that
were you teaching in a classroom? Yeah, so from about
2005 to 2011 I was teaching
in a classroom and I was teaching adults. Actually I taught in
Japan for a while and I was teaching in 2011. I was teaching
in a company. It was in-company training
for adult, business professionals. Small
classes. It was different. I've also taught
in a lot of different settings, in a university, in different
private language schools, a lot of different places. Got it.
Lots a lot of experience, way more than me! Well, tell me
about you. How long have you been teaching online? and English?
Well I was, I guess my teaching started when I was in college.
I was a writing tutor and so I would help people with their papers, basically.
I'd get a lot of international students and they would need some help with the English, too.
I really liked helping people. I think
that was just, I loved seeing people have that light bulb moment where they're
like, "Ahh, I understand it now. Now I can do it better." Yeah, so rewarding.
"I feel like I can communicate better." And so I started actually
teaching English in the classroom in Brazil in 2010.
Nice. I moved there to be with my husband and
thought, "What can I do?" I can teach English! That's perfect!
And then Espresso English started around what year?
2012. Oh ok. Yeah! That's awesome! I love that, you know,
we started around the same time and now you're here and
yeah it's very cool. What was your
teaching like, I mean what was your classroom like in Brazil?
I was teaching adults and also small classes, small group classes,
usually maybe 4 to 8 students. They
would usually put me with the intermediate to advanced learners.
Normally they would use a native English speaker for the higher levels.
I really loved working with the students because they were
fun, they participated a lot in the class,
which I love, right. I think we get a lot of energy from that give and take.
of teacher and student. That's my favorite too. So did you
ever have a favorite student?
Can I ask that? I know we're supposed to love all students
equally, but did you ever have a favorite?
I did have one student who I greatly admired because
he came to me, he was high beginner, and
really had a lot of problems with English. In fact in his
native languages of Portuguese he had a speech problem. Oh wow.
Pronouncing English words was even worse. Yeah. But he worked
really hard. He overcame that lack of natural talent
just by, he did his homework every day. He would study
extra. He would go far beyond, you know,
the minimum. I think the funniest thing that
ever happened with him was, he was far-sighted. That means that
he could see the chalk board or the white board, but
he couldn't see a text. Oh wow. If he didn't have
his glasses. Right, ok. Well, sometimes he would forget his glasses. Then of course
I couldn't use any of my worksheets. Oh no! So, one day, I was
not very, or I had prepared a really great class. He came in and said, "Teacher, I
forgot my glasses." And I thought, "Oh great, well it's just going to have to be
conversation." Well, sometimes conversation is difficult when
you're pre-intermediate. So we talked and I asked him about his weekend and
about his work and everything I could think of and we were
half an hour into the conversation and I was thinking I don't have anything else to talk about!
What am I going to do? And I look at him and I see he has a pocket
and in his pocket... I said, "Are those your glasses?"
Oh my goodness! And he said, "Look! It's my glasses!" He put them on.
We finished the class with some worksheets. It was
funny. But he made a ton of progress. He was a solid intermediate by the time
we finished. That's amazing! Did you have any students who particularly inspired
you? Yeah, you know, I learned a lot from
some of my students. I was thinking of one in particular in Japan, one
of the adults in the company where I was teaching. Through talking
with him I found out that in his personal life his hobby was to
play drums. This is important because in the English
class, one thing that he was having a lot of trouble with was
stress and intonation and
the musicality of English. And so he actually thought of
this. He taught me that playing drums actually
helped him to understand the musicality of English and where to put
the stress. Because one day I think we were talking about how in English it's so
important to put stress on a certain syllable or a certain word in the sentence
and he was like, "Oh, it's like playing the drums." It's da-da
da-DAH! Or "Da-DA-da-da-da. And I was like, "Yes!"
Exactly, yes! And that was just kind of an interesting moment,
just to see him apply something he was really passionate about to
learning English and that helped a lot. And he was just such a sweet student.
He was really shy but he would speak up
in, when he had something to say it was amazing, when he spoke up.
It was, "Wow!" You just taught me something new.
Yeah, that was, that's a student I'll remember maybe forever.
That's a nice breakthrough! I think one of the cool things about teaching in a classroom
is you see a lot of different learning styles.
You know, some students learn better with a lot of interaction. Some students learn better if
they have the time to kind of quietly study by themselves.
But you have to teach everyone in the classroom, right. Yeah.
Now how about, has there ever been a moment when things
didn't go as planned or maybe you made a mistake or something?
I don't know. Let's go there!
We can't just talk about the good stuff! That's true. There have been classes
I've been extremely unprepared for and I've had to just improvise things
off the top of my head and I don't like that because I like to feel like I'm
prepared. I think there's a parallel to English learners, actually.
A lot of English learners, they want to feel like they know everything
and they're ready to say the right things in a conversation. But
sometimes you have to do it on the fly and have that ability to improvise.
I always felt really insecure about those classes
when I hadn't prepared anything or the printer didn't work
to print the worksheets or whatever it was. But if I could
just keep a positive attitude, they actually ended up being really good classes. I bet! That's
what I was going to ask. They probably turned out really well. Yeah.
That's interesting. Yeah, I think, I hate it when
a student would ask me a question in class that I didn't really
know the answer to, I didn't really feel confident about it.
I think that's difficult because I want to
be able to answer anything. But I'm a human, I don't know everything.
I'll admit it. Sometimes you just have to say
I'll get back to you, I need to check. I know sometimes
students didn't like that and I felt bad about it but you know
then you check it and you get back to them and it's ok! Or I would say, "Hey, why don't you
look that up and you can report back to us!"
Yeah are the moments I just felt like, "Oh, sorry!"
They're kind of rough. So what's your favorite part about teaching online?
I love that you know, in a classroom, I would have
maximum 15 students, in the US and in
Japan the class sizes were quite small at least where
I taught. But I love that online I can reach so many people.
My videos and website lessons and what not
reach a lot of people. So that's
really exciting and hearing from those people, you know, when
you guys send me an email and you're like, "Hi, I'm so-and-so
from so-and-so country..." I'm like, "Wow! I want to go
there!" That sounds interesting. And just having that connection
with people pretty much all over the world is super
exciting and I think that's what's different from teaching in a classroom.
Yeah I went to teach in Japan and I had that experience, but
until now I never got to meet people from all over
the world. Yes. It's super exciting. I would say exactly the same
thing. In addition to just purely being able to
talk to you and teach a lot of students that we wouldn't be able to
fit in a classroom, there's just
like you said, I get emails from all over the world, and in some of my
courses there's homework, and so when students send in their homework
I get a little insight into their culture or into their way of thinking.
That's just fascinating for me. I love travel. I know you
love travel and one of the best parts of traveling is getting exposed
to different viewpoints and learning new things. Yeah! We
love teaching online! We love teaching you guys!
Well that's wonderful. I'm glad we could talk a little bit about our classroom
experience and our online experience and I know we probably
both have a lot of stories to share but we'll continue talking and
I think we're doing another episode next week. Friday.
That's right. Not about teaching, but I think we're going to talk about
the holidays that are coming up. Yeah there's a holiday coming up in the United States.
We're going to chat about some of our favorite holidays and traditions.
Yeah, that'll be fun! Awesome! Alright, see you guys then! Bye! Bye!